The Future is Dark and Uncaring
by Darth Nihl
Summary: A time travel story. No planned pairings. Six very different people go to the past to change their own and the wizarding world's future. Ignores epilogue, but cannon compliant up to that point. No Bashing. The six time travelers are: Wayne Hopkins (Hufflepuff), Susan Bones, Neville Longbottom, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Marietta Edgecombe, and Draco Malfoy.
1. Prologue

**A/N I am not JK Rowling, evidenced by my total lack of writing skill and clichéd writing. This is a time travel story with no currently planned pairings, definitely no slash. Please review if you have any critique or commentary.**

Prologue: A Muddled Present

The six of them stood together as their world crumbled around them, their last stronghold besieged by the enemy, a strange group that would never have been seen together prior to the latest war. Susan Bones, former head of Magical Law Enforcement; Draco Malfoy, former Death Eater; Marietta Edgecombe, still scarred from her childhood betrayal; Neville Longbottom, important member of the Wizengamot; Justin Finch-Fletchley, healer at Saint Mungo's; and Wayne Hopkins, former quidditch star. Loud booms and cracks reverberated through the small room as the house's wards groaned under attack. It would not take much longer until the aurors would be upon them. If that happened, death by spell fire was the best they could hope for.

"It's over." Susan said, weary lines carved into her face by years on the run, "Everything we've done, the people we've killed, the people who died for us - We're all that's left. If we do not go through with this, all this fighting will have been pointless."

"And if we do it, we risk destroying everything. What gives you the right to play god with the universe?"

"Not all of us have the gold and blackmail for the imperius defense, Malfoy. Not that you even need it. I don't even know why you're here!" The hatred was evident in Justin Flinch-Fletchly's words.

Silence dragged on after this outburst, no one quite knowing what to say.

"Listen," Wayne broke the silence, "While _Draco_," he emphasized the first name, "hasn't always been on our side- hell he's been someone we'd all rather see dead in the past- he's here now with us. He could have left when it was clear we stood no chance, that we were just putting off the inevitable, but he did not. He stayed and fought. And either way, we need him; this ritual needs six people, and we're the only ones left, unless you're planning to sit here and try to kill as many as you can before they get you."

There was no arguing with that.

"I guess if this fails and we end the world we'll have taken all of them out." Justin joked humorlessly.

There had never truly been any question on whether or not they would go through with the ritual; they had all been preparing for the past week. They themselves did not truly understand why the ritual should work, or whether it even had a chance. To go back in time and change the past was no simple undertaking, it had taken years of work from the best rune scribe in centuries to perfect the process, and it had driven her madder than she had already been.

Each one stood at the point of a six-pointed star, drawn in unicorn blood on the rune engraved floor. Each one held a basilisk fang in their right hand and a manticore claw in their left. Intricate runes had been carved into every inch of their bodies, the blood welling up and charging them. As they began to chant the long chant they had memorized, the runes began to glow brightly with an unearthly, pulsing green light.

Their chanting reached a fevered pitch as they neared the end of the ritual, and at the crescendo, they drove the claw and fang deep into their own hearts. A ball of darkness spread from the center of the star and began to absorb them as one of the walls collapsed and ministry aurors poured in, but it was too late, the six were already gone. And then the world exploded.


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N: Thanks to the one guy following this story, hope you enjoy! I've always had a good imagination, but this is the first time I've tried writing anything down. Your review really helped me stay motivated to continue trying to get my idea onto paper. Anyway, I have not edited this in the slightest, haven't even re-read it to be honest, so it's probably garbage. I'm going to do that soon, but figured I'd go ahead and upload it now for... some reason. This is a set up chapter, the next one will hopefully have a bit more action, sorry.**

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**Chapter 1: A New Beginning**

Wayne Hopkins woke up screaming. While this would be out of the ordinary for the average seven-year old boy, Wayne had been doing this for the past month. His throat was raw from the screams which barely made a sound anymore. He got up and padded to his father's room.

"Father?"

Load snoring was the only response he received.

"Father?" he asked, a little louder this time, his throat sounding scratchy and dry. He knocked on the door when the sounds did not change.

The snoring stopped and was replaced with muttered cursing.

"What do you want?" His father grumbled, eyes bloodshot, his hair and beard unruly from a late night out.

"Do you have any cough syrup? Please?" His voice sounded pitiful even to himself.

"Cough syrup? COUGH SYRUP?! You woke me up at 5 am for COUGH SYRUP?! Get the hell out of my room and leave me alone you little arse-wipe!"

The door slammed in Wayne's face.

He realized his father was probably hung over from the night before; his father was always hung over. No, that wasn't fair, Wayne thought, his father was also often drunk. With that happy thought going through his head, he headed towards the bathroom to wash his face and have a drink of water from the sink.

He knew he was not normal; his father never missed an opportunity to tell him as much, but this screaming, that was new. He wondered if he was dying. Maybe he would finally see Mother again, if that was the case then being dead might even be pleasurable.

Standing on his tip-toes, Wayne looked at himself in the mirror after splashing his face with water. At first, all he saw was a tired, sick-looking seven-year-old boy, but that image soon began to swim and shift, soon the face he saw was unrecognizable but for the eyes, they were his eyes. It was old, lined and tired looking, scarred from what were likely many battles. The face winked at him. And Wayne's world turned to blindingly white pain.

Seven-year-old Wayne died, and in his place the older Wayne was reborn.

Wayne lay on his back on the cold, grimy floor of the bathroom, breathing raggedly. The plan had been to travel back to their first year of Hogwarts and fix the universe before it all went wrong, everyone else's plan that is; Wayne had plans of his own. He had never been good at runes, or rituals, or magic in general in fact, but he had spent time helping to create the ritual, enough time to figure out that modifying one set of runes would be enough to crudely change the date of travel. And so, by replacing a dot with a dash here and a squiggle with a straight line there, he managed to transport himself further back in time than the others, though he was not sure quite how far back he had traveled.

Wayne stumbled towards the entrance, unused to his shorter, less coordinated body. He opened the door and picked up the newspaper that was on the porch.

October 3rd, 1987.

He'd done it! Modified the ritual correctly, though he had only been planning on traveling one year earlier, not four. In any case, he began to put the plan he had come up with into place. In 1991, Wayne Hopkins was an orphan, his father having drunk himself to death on a warm summer night the previous year, but here, his father still lived. Wayne went about rectifying that fact.

He opened up the gas main until the hissing was easily heard, then he went and locked every door and window collecting his father's wallet on the way. Then he left, hiding in a bush a hundred meters away from the house to wait for his father to make his morning, afternoon on days such as this one, tea.

Wayne only had to wait for two hours before his father roused himself from his alcohol induced stupor and turned on the stove. The ground shook from the blast. Wayne smiled as he watched the house burn.

For someone who had worked hard to modify the ritual and travel back far enough to kill his own father, Wayne had not thought far past that point. Now that the police and fire department had cleared out, he needed somewhere to sleep, and he needed a plan of what to. He had about £600 from the stolen wallet, enough to last him a while, but not enough to last the four years it would take to get his Hogwarts letter. He started walking to the underground station, and from there- well he could figure that out later.

Figuring it out was not as successful of a plan as Wayne had originally hoped. He had left the burnt-out husk that had been his home in Grahame Park and taken the tube to central London, figuring he could find a cheap place to sleep and steal whatever he needed using the simple magic his body could handle. The first issue he ran into was the fact that no one would rent a room to a seven-year-old boy, so instead he was forced to hide in an alleyway behind a dumpster to get rest that night. The next was that while he slept, someone stole all £590 he had remaining, leaving him with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Wayne cursed himself for his stupidity as he sat and tried to figure out what he would do next. The most important thing was of course, to survive until he could get to Hogwarts, the others would help him then, as much as he hated to ask for assistance. His first plan once again failed, after begging for just thirty minutes, a pair of bobbies came and chased him away, leaving his young lungs wheezing and his skinny frame shaking from exertion.

His next plan met with more success. While he could not do complex magic, lacking both a wand and the biological maturity to control it, he did remember some rune-work from his previous life. Wayne began by finding a nice alleyway with an overhang to protect him from the elements and a large bin to obscure it from view. There he cut his finger using a bit of broken glass and drew a simple circle, broken by three squiggly lines, a simple distraction rune to make passers-bye ignore his little corner. He added a few trigger runes to alert him if anyone somehow managed to stumble across his first line of defense and finally a warming rune to keep himself from getting too cold during the long nights. Now he had a place to stay, where he would have at least a modicum of safety to fall back on, not that he would leave behind the kitchen knife he had found next to the bin and inscribed with a sharpening rune. So now he needed a way to keep himself fed, for which thievery was clearly the easiest option. He may never have been the best at magic, never casting the most powerful spells, never knowing the most advanced rune schemas, but he did know the basics, and he was facing muggles; it was almost too easy.

Using the knife, much more precise than a broken piece of glass, Wayne carefully carved three distraction runes into his arm; one on the hand, one on the forearm, and one on his upper arm. Now, he could simply walk out into the London crowd and no one would notice him sneaking his arm into their pockets to grab their wallets. Now his life finally started to look up for the first time since his father's "untimely" demise.

Three months passed this way, with Wayne living in his little corner of the alleyway, quite comfortably in fact, having purchased a small sleeping bag and a pillow with his ill-gotten money. When the reports of pickpocketing increased, and with them police presence, Wayne began to go further a field in his daily pursuit, riding the tube and seeing London, something he had never really been able to do in his previous life. As he lay down to sleep, he smiled to himself; this was a great way to spend his time until Hogwarts. Maybe he would even go on vacation, he had made several thousand pounds already thanks to his sticky fingers, maybe he would go to France and try his luck there!

Having become accustomed to success, Wayne was shocked the next day when he reached into a man's coat pocket, put his fingers around the wallet inside, and - was interrupted by a little girl's cry of alarm.

Wayne looked up into a pair of brown eyes, burning with indignation.

"Get your hand out of my Father's pocket!"

Wayne froze, she should not have been able to notice his arm, much less the location of his hand, how? But of course, he should have realized the risk; while distraction runes worked perfectly on muggles, wizards and witches could overcome them with a bit of concentration. Luckily the father appeared not to be a wizard and was currently looking at his daughter with a confused face.

"Get it out!" the girl reached into her father's coat and yanked Wayne's hand, in the process nicking it with her fingernail.

The man continued to look somewhat confused, so Wayne quickly picked up his wallet and handed it to him.

"Sorry sir, you dropped this." He said, handing the wallet to the confused man.

"Thank you, young man."

"But father, didn't you see? He tried to steal it, I caught him!"

The father once again looked confused still holding on to the wallet with one hand, "Now, H-"

He was interrupted by a brown-haired woman who came roaring out of a nearby store.

"Richard, what is going on? Why on earth are you- and oh my goodness, what happened to your hand?" She looked at Wayne's hand in horror.

Wayne too looked at his hand and cursed. When the girl had grabbed his hand, she had nicked his distraction rune, breaking it; and, since it had been a rune carved into his flesh, with the rune schema now broken blood was now freely pouring out turning his hand into a ghastly sight to behold.

The girl too was distracted by this sight, forgetting for the moment her indignation over the crime that had almost been committed.

"Here let me help you." The lady said, as she tore a bit of cloth off her shirt and crudely bandaged the wound. "Where are your parents dear?"

Wayne was trapped, he might be able to escape, but Richard, as he had been called by his apparent wife, wise finally leaving his rune induced stupor, and he was a rather muscular man. Wayne hesitated, trying to figure out what the best plan of action would be. His natural instinct was to knife the woman and her husband and make a run for it, but that clearly was a terrible option.

"Son, where are your parents?" Richard finally seemed to shake his confusion and asked.

"They're right over there, sir." Wayne pointed in a vague direction.

"I'll call them over." The lady said. "Describe them?"

Wayne hesitated, trying to decide what path to take. In the end he decided on honesty, or at least his version of it.

"I- I don't have a family." He finally said, looking down and attempting to appear scared and alone, from the two adults' sad gasps, apparently a quite successful attempt.

Wayne soon found himself bundled up and taken to the nearest hospital to be looked after.

"Hello, my name is Dr. Adan." An elderly man introduced himself to Wayne. "Would you mind giving me your hand to have a look?"

Wayne gave his arm over for inspection silently.

"Luckily for you, these cuts are not too deep. Do you remember how you got them?"

Wayne shook his head no.

"Hmm, they look rather fresh." The doctor said as he disinfected the cuts and bandaged them up.

"Can I go?" Wayne asked as soon as the doctor had completed his treatment.

"Well, sadly we cannot just let a young boy out on his own. Do you have anyone we can get in touch with to come pick you up?"

"My mum doesn't have a phone, she's probably worried sick." Wayne responded, trying to sound worried.

"My, well, if you tell us where we can find her, we can send someone right over. Just so that she does not worry too much." The Dr. Adan responded.

Wayne sighed, he had hoped that that lie would work, though it was clearly a long shot.

"I don't have a mother." He finally said. "I live on my own."

Doctor Adan nodded, having already surmised from Wayne's dress and behavior that he was likely a street kid.

"Well young man, I guess you will have to stay with us for a bit in that case. I would like to make sure your cuts do not get infected in any case." In a transparent attempt to seem unconcerned the doctor added, "What do you want me to call you? I do not believe I caught your name earlier."

"David. David Holland" Wayne immediately responded, having been ready and not wanting to risk the chance of being connected to his father's death and any family he may have had left.

"All right, David. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Dr. Adan said, smiling comfortingly. He left the room gently shutting the door behind him. He walked to the family that had brought the poor boy, David Holland, if that was truly his name to the hospital. They seemed like a nice enough family, not many would have brought a street kid to the hospital to get checked out.

"Thank you so much for bringing the boy here," Dr. Adan said to the man. "He will be well taken care of."

"Does he have any family? Anyone to take care of him?" The lady asked.

"We will do our best to find them Ms." The doctor replied. "If you want, I can keep you abreast of the situation."  
"We'd appreciate that."

The doctor walked onward, leaving the family behind as he turned in his report.

Wayne sat alone to planning his next steps. Social services had almost certainly been contacted about him already, and if not would be soon; if he did nothing than likely he would end up in the foster care system. Now that he thought about it, that would not be too bad of an option. While he would not have as much free time, having documents in the muggle world would certainly be helpful, and he would not have to rely on others once he got to Hogwarts. He stiffened up feeling a pair of eyes boring into him. Looking up he noticed the girl from before.

"Who are you?" She asked, almost angrily.

"I'm David Holland."

"You tricked my father."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The girl glared at him for implying she was wrong.

"You are different." She said.

"Everyone is different." Wayne smiled. Children were so easy to talk around.

"But you are - You are more different!"

"What makes you think that?"

"I- I don't know. You feel different." She looked at him challengingly, as if waiting for him to once again question her.

Before Wayne could respond, the door to his room opened and the girl's father walked in.

"Come on, don't you think its immature to bother this boy after everything he has been through today? Let him rest." He commanded his daughter leading her out of the room.

"But fatherrrrrr" the girl whined.

"No buts Hermione."

The door shut behind them, leaving a wide-eyed Wayne staring after. If this was Hermione, what had he done?


End file.
